Exclamationmarkitis

One hundred and eighty two.

That's how many exclamation marks I had written into a 51K novel. I know; I counted every single one.

Kingstone has been...well, not completely cured, but it certainly looks a lot healthier, thanks to Casey's brilliant editing at Bedazzled Ink. When I mailed her and said I seemed to be suffering from exclamationmarkitis, she said;

Many years ago when I worked for another publisher, the very first book I received to look at had already gone through editing and was in typeset. It was a little book and had hundreds of exclamation points. Nearly every spoken sentence ended in an exclamation point. The author was trying to emphasize bright and breezy dialogue between people on vacation... It read like everyone was constantly shouting at each other. Needless-to-say, it had to be completely re-edited.

It's tricky using exclamation points for anything other than actual shouting because once you start using it for emphasis, it's hard to keep it under control and the exclamation point loses its impact.

Believe me, after going through the edit and having to click the mouse five or six times for every exclamation mark I agreed to taking out (I did ask to leave a couple in), I think I was cured.

I also seem to have a secondary infection: semicolonitis. And a minor case of hyphenated no-ones.

Which only goes to show that an editor is worth their weight in gold for the polish they can bring to your manuscript...

But one hundred and eighty two. Sheesh.

The Kingstone edits have arrived!

Delighted to say I'm working on the edits of Kingstone, which popped into my inbox this morning...

Even more delighted to say that, after getting about a third of the way through, there aren't humungous changes to be made - unlike with StarMark. Probably because StarMark had been written and revamped so many times over the years, it needed a thorough going over to bring the whole text together. Kingstone, on the other hand, feels like the text is all together from the off.

As the Bink team noted in their cover email - it's mainly nitpicking to sort out. 

Oh - and exclamationitis. Or maybe exclamationmarkitis. I seem to have peppered the text with an awful lot of them, and they've now been rooted out. A few essential ones have been left in, of course...

Don't forget that Kingstone is available to pre-order on Amazon, due for publication around July.

When your characters talk back

This morning, I had to get up early; the cat has taken to either scratching at or pushing things off of my bedside chest of drawers in an attempt to get his breakfast served if I'm not awake and his tummy's rumbling.

It was 7am, so not too bad. Although it IS half term and I'd have preferred a bit more of a lie-in, if I'm honest...

Anyway, cat fed, cup of tea made, couldn't go back to sleep, so I left Mr Squidge snoring, went downstairs and picked up the WIP.

I'd reached a bit of a sticky point a couple of days previously; resorted to post-it notes (other brands of sticky notes ARE available!) to try to map out the sequence of some key scenes. I thought this morning, as the house was quiet and there was no one else wanting the laptop, I'd try and write the next scene in the sequence.

Two new characters appeared to do what Zanni needed them to do, which was fine. However, one of them - Tia - said something and - POW!

LIGHTBULB MOMENT! 

This minor character, in one sentence, gave me a) the reason why none of the townspeople go into the crystal forest if they can avoid it and b) why my protagonist, Anton (and his dad) hate my main character, Zanni, so much. It's going to racket up the tension no end!

The downside is that there is now a lot of rewriting to do within the 17K words I've produced so far to make what Tia's revealed feel natural and real within what I've already written, but I will tackle that at a later date. For the moment, I just need to work this new information into the story from this point onwards and see how it shapes up...

Breaking even

Granny Rainbow - although published under the name of Panda Eyes - was essentially a self-published book; I paid for everything except the ISBN number.

Which is fine.

I was willing to invest the money, see where it took me and my little book. I knew it would be a long time until I sold enough copies to break even. Assuming, of course, I could even sell enough to break even.

And then came More Granny Rainbow. Published in the same way, with my own spondoolies, but less attractive it seemed to the reader as sales of this book didn't go as well as the first. Add the two sets of costs together and it would take me even longer to break even...

The other day I was doing my 'author accounts', ready to see how much I'd earned from author talks and the like to disclose to the tax man.

And - incredibly - I discovered that I have sold enough copies of both Granny Rainbow books to cover all their costs. It's taken three years, but I have finally broken even. Hooray!

Having said that, it was never about the money...I published Granny Rainbow simply to see whether my stories would be enjoyed by young readers, and they are. Making a little bit of money on them is nice, but it wasn't why I decided to write.

Reading is important. If I can, through my books, encourage even one reluctant reader to discover the joy of burying themselves in a book - be it fiction or non-fiction - then I consider myself to be one of the richest authors alive.

So hooray! for breaking even, but hooray times ten! if my writing opened a door that would've remained closed otherwise.

Just hanging around...

Yes, it's an old song by The Stranglers... It's also the situation at Maison Squidge.

Nope, we're not waiting for something. Squidgeling T is - quite literally - hanging around.

He's taken to climbing. Indoor climbing. We have a fantastic indoor climbing centre in our town, where he goes two or three times a week. At least one of his peers is an awesome climber, on the team there and everything. T is not quite up to that standard yet, but from what he says after each session, he's not doing too badly.

Anyway, apparently one of the things you can do to build up your arm and upper body strength outside of the climbing centre is fit a fingerboard in your home. This is a device that usually is hung above a doorway (note: solid walls only or you could find yourself with a builder's bill when the door frame collapses). Squidgeling T looked up one manufacturer and baulked at the prices. But...Mr Squidge's engineering and Squidgeling T's enjoyment of tinkering in the garage came good.

They have made a fingerboard. It doesn't have all the holes (yet) because apparently if you use them early, while you're still growing, you can damage your fingers and predispose yourself to arthritis.

Mr Squidge installed it this morning.

Right outside our bathroom.

So, if you visit Maison Squidge from now on and need the loo, do check whether there's a lanky teenager hanging around outside first...

Getting in touch with my dark side

Last night, we had our monthly NIBS meeting. I chose to take the paint sample cards again as we'd had fun with them in the past and after my recent school visits, I have *ahem* obtained quite a few more to choose from... (Mind you, I resorted to sending Squidgeling J into B&Q last time because I think the staff are beginning to recognise me...)

Special mention HAS to go to AT, whose piece had us all laughing again. I've mentioned before that Valspar, the company who produce these paints, have a creative team working on names for the thousands of different shades they produce. In a nutshell, AT's piece was about a member of that creative team; a gentleman who, after years in the job, finally went a bit doo-lally because there were only so many names he could come up with for 'pink'!

I chose 'Skein of Blue' to start with, but nothing gelled so I plumped for 'Ceremonial Ochre' instead. Ended up with this (unfinished) piece:

The priest pounded the red earth, mixing it with great gobs of his own saliva into a paste. Aleeka shuddered, knowing that before long, some of the revolting mixture would be smeared across her forehead.

Payter's grip tightened on her upper arms. "Don't show them you're scared," he hissed into her ear.

"I'm not scared," she growled back.

"You should be."

And yet she wasn't. Even though she knew that smear of paste on her skin would mark her out as the village's latest sacrifice. 

No-one ever came back from the cave. You knew you were as good as dead as soon as you picked out the black pebble from the reindeer skin bag. Aleeka had stared at the stone, numb and disbelieving, looking up only when her mother's ululations broke the silence of the choosing ceremony.

She had since been guest of honour at her own death feast, her face whited out with ash so that all present would know she was not of this world any more. 

Fear had not figured in her emotions then, and now she experienced only raw excitement...

Might be the start of something bigger, I think. Today, I've used some of this and combined it with an older bit of flash (also created at NIBS) into a piece of flash for a competition. That means I can't share it with you yet - but of course I'll share when it doesn't win and I can do what I like with it. *winks*

Our second activity used a rather unusual resource. Have you seen those sets of postcards based on book covers?

I picked a set up from an 'unwanted Christmas present' stall at church; the box contained 100 Penguin classic book covers. I'd thumbed through them and though I'd heard of many of the titles, there were even more I hadn't. Like...The Case of the Curious Kitten. August is a Wicked Month. Vile Bodies. Kiss Kiss.

So I sorted out a few with a darker feel to them and challenged the group to visit their Dark Side. Sweet Danger, Not to be Taken and The Half-awakened Wife were picked by the others for their grisly and gruesome stories, but I chose Vile Bodies... It wasn't really so much a story I wrote as a racist handbook, something that might figure in a dystopian novel. See what you think...

Among a homogenous race, the vile body must be removed. Consistent standards must be maintained at all life stages. Aberrant forms will not be tolerated.

Height charts will be consulted to ensure growth patterns are within normal range. Excessive growth will be curbed and insufficient growth encouraged by compulsory chemical intervention.

Regular weighing will dictate dietary requirements and exercise regimes.

Skin colour will be restricted to shades B26 to B71. And shades outside of this range will require bleaching or UV exposure as necessary.

Sensory perception will be maintained at 90% effective, minimum. Intervention techniques may be used between 80 and 90% effectiveness, but anything under 80% will not be tolerated. 

Bodies which do not meet homogeneity standards will, in the first instance, be corrected. If correction fails or bodies are deemed to be vile and beyond correction, then euthanasia is preferable.

*shudders*

It seems that the writing mo-jo is definitely switched on again,,,even if it is churning out some shadowy stuff! Hooray!

The Return of the Writing Mo-jo

At last.

At long last.

I've picked up my WIP again.

I can't remember the last time I wrote anything for the Crystal Keeper's Daughter. Probably last summer?

Continued illness before Christmas and a course which started last September have either eaten up any available writing time or kept me from feeling 'with it' enough to add anything of value to my WIP.

But for the last two days, I've been able to write. What I've written feels like dross, because I've been so long away from the story I'm having to refamiliarise myself with the plot as well as relearn how to write well. But I'll get there. Eventually.

Feels good.

And the rainbow? Because it's a grey day outside, but things are looking a bit more cheerful inside now I'm writing again...